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Would moderating content before being publish violate against decidim's social contract?
Dear community,
I recently presented decidim and it's functionality to my supervisors. One remark that came up pretty quickly is the possibility to moderate content before being published.
I know that there is the possibility to flag content as inappropriate and then to hide it.
However, the concern came up that offensive comments or proposals posted in the evening or on Sundays will be online at least until the next working day (and if the moderators are out of office even longer).
Would a module that gives ability to moderate content before publishing violate against decidim's social contract and thus negotiating the possibility of using decidim as participatory platform?
Best wishes,
Eduard
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Conversation with Ivan Vergés
I definitely think that is against the social contract to moderate before publishing. It leads very easily to censorship
I am with @microstudi. In addition, these offensive comments - according to the terms of use and conditions - can ban a user. The cost-benefit ratio is very high for users to make offensive comments.
I also think that moderating before publishing removes transparency and draws a blured line with censorship.
Anyway you can still create the module as far as it is GPL-3 licensed and use Decidim, but it could ban you from being member of the community.
Thank you for your replies. In the first spot, I came to the same conclusion as you. However, on the other hand, you could now - technically - have a moderator sitting in front of the platform watching over all incoming content and flagging every critical post. How did you convince critics of the possible danger of trolling?
You're right @eduard. Although there're options. For example, Decidim begins to be a participatory platform when we enable the components. These components, you've the option to disable comments. In fact, you can enable / disable as many times as you want. As an option, you could explain in the T&C that during the weekend comments will not be enabled. On the other hand, I also believe that the balance between safety and usability is complicated. If you want a more "safe" tool you run the risk that it is not very usable. In the end, I think, is to be clear about our usability / security preference.
From our experience in France : any platform (whether it belongs to a Metropolis or a Municipality) that has been in use for at least 2 years never had to moderate more than 6/7 comments/proposals ( and 50% were actually self-advertising). I don't know if some of you had diferent figures in Spain ?
@paarals I don't think we're talking about a security problem but a trolling problem instead, whic is different.
@eduard a module that you could impement would be one that allows users to denounce comments and if a comment accumulates more than N denounces without moderation it gets hidden until it is moderated. I guess this will be ok with the social contract, and I guess there's something similar with Proposals isn't it @product?
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